Coming from a Social Democratic family in Altrohlau (now Stará Role), she came into contact with various organizations of the Sudeten German
labour movement at an early age. At five years of age, she joined the children's gymnastics class of the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Association. Later, she became a member of the Red Falcons and the Socialist Youth. After finishing school she took a job at the Urania in
Karlsbad. In 1936 she became a member of the
German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic. From 1938 she worked for the Social Insurance Institution in
Prague. Because of her date of birth she was barred at the last minute from emigrating to England with her parents, so on 8 March 1939, shortly before the German
Wehrmacht occupied
Prague, she decided to return to Altrohlau with her then boyfriend and later husband Ernst, where she worked at the Agricultural Reconstruction Office. Her son Herbert († 1984) was born at the end of December 1943. Her husband was killed in
Courland in March 1945. After the war, she took on office work in the Karlovy Vary Antifa office, which was tasked with compiling lists of reliable Social Democrats and Communists. On 20 November 1946, she left
Karlovy Vary on the last Antifa transport and, with her son, was taken to the
Furth im Wald border transit camp. After another stay in
Königsdorf, where she helped found a local SPD chapter in March 1948, and a brief stay with her parents in
Birmingham, England, she became an employee of the
Bavarian SPD in
Munich on 1 July 1949. In 1951, she signed the founding charter of the Seliger Congregation alongside ,
Alois Ullmann, and . In the following years, she served on the editorial staff of the publishing house
Die Brücke, which published the Seliger Congregation's newsletter and other publications. Even before, but especially after, the
Velvet Revolution , she traveled several times to
Czechoslovakia and the
Czech Republic, her former homeland, to promote understanding between Czechs and Germans. In numerous articles, she also described the work of the Sudeten German Social Democrats. For her efforts toward reconciliation between Germans and Czechs and for her commitment to the Seliger Community, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2002. In 2016, she received the
Karel Kramář Medal from the hands of Czech Prime Minister
Bohuslav Sobotka. Sippl died on 18 October 2025, at the age of 105. == Works ==